


A Departure.

by decayinghorizon



Category: Death Note
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decayinghorizon/pseuds/decayinghorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of it was futile, because silver and bronze would never make gold, no matter how much he wanted it. (Mello-centric.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Departure.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't happy with how I wrote Mello in my other series (bury your flame), so I wrote this. There's a little Matt part, but nothing _super_ shippy, more like his view of Mello (in a very stylized sort of way), because apparently I am incapable of writing Mello without also including Matt in some way. also, Near's POV was a last minute addition, but it's there, so here's Mello in three ways, all the Wammy boys.  
>  This is written in second person and very imagery-heavy, sorry if it's not your thing!

Silver medal, second place, slipping through your fragile fingers, falling to the floor and bursting into flames, melting down until it's molten, dripping burning metallic tears to match the ones falling from your icy eyes, pain screaming in full blazing clarity, "not good enough!", not strong or smart enough, not ever, not really.

It's all play pretend make-believe, until it's not, until your hero and your idol is dead and there's no one left to look up to or to save you, and you crave desperately to take the monster's place, carry on a legacy; you know he chose you, because he told you so much, let you into the life he so carefully guarded, told you his stories. and you know that the golden crown is yours and yours alone, and that you are the rightful heir. 

Until you're not. 

Until the dream shatters, glass collecting at your feet in jagged shards, reflecting your broken face back at you as the news settles heavy on your heart, your mind racing faster than it should be, buzzing frantically, trying desperately to make sense of it all.

He hadn't chosen you. he hadn't chosen at all, and you weren't good enough, because if you were, he would have told, would have said the words that would redeem you, that would prove the system wrong and tell everyone that you were the rightful number one all along, that you were finally worthy of the title you longed for, worked for, would kill for.

But you're left empty, and angry; a cold white snowdrift at your feet, kneeling and frustratingly calm, slotting puzzle pieces into place the way you should have fallen into first place without hesitation, without resistance, and you want to kick him until he's bruised and broken, until he feels the way that you do, until he's no longer so infuriatingly porcelain, until he shows some outward sign of life, of feeling.

This shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't, and more snowflakes fall to the floor in a shower, an endless cycle, a clatter of pieces bouncing on the carpet, that soft, sure voice echoing "loser" in every piece, at every impact, at every reset of the puzzle, full of emptiness instead of icy ill-will; it means nothing to him and that's why you hate it.

He doesn't feel anything, and you feel everything. You got all of the emotion and the passion and the things that geniuses don't need, you got the distracting bothersome qualities, you got the inability to sit still, to be quiet and calm and solve silent puzzles.

Instead, you are this loud, angry thing, screaming and pacing and crying and running away to solve things in a way your brain can comprehend, you have to move and to leave and to get the air and the space you so desperately need to maintain some semblance of calm, to reconstruct your delicate facade, train your face and your brain and your mouth to stop betraying you, to keep your emotions from bursting at the seams.

It's more space than you think. It's a plane ticket, an ocean, an endless number of hours away. It’s instinct, it’s flight instead of fight because fighting for this didn’t get you anywhere. It's nobody you know, it's leaving everyone behind and not thinking about it because if you thought, you'd stop, and then you'd lose, because you can't play that way.

You are not collected and quiet, you are not cool and level and logical, you don't systematically solve puzzles; you burn them and start from scratch, you take the shortcuts and find the loopholes and do things in ways you can understand, you are impulsive and chaotic and fast-paced and if you slow down you're a loser and you have to be better, you have to prove that you are the one, the prince that should sit the throne, the only heir that can do it, the successor that can outdo the original. You have to kill your hero, you have to set him ablaze and remember that he was just a man and not your god, and that you are so much better, stronger, can be so much more than he who turned your world upside down, than Near dressed in white. You deserved better, and you will not give up. You dress in black, in leather, carry a rosary as a token and a reminder to never put your trust into deities, into beings outside of your control, into idols and heroes and people you thought you could believe in. 

The only person you can believe in is you, and you have to be your own god now. 

\----------x------------

Here sits the second in line, the boy who could have been king, in another lifetime; in another world.  
On your throne made of fragile glass, your silver medal is the chain around your neck, it’s jesus dragging you down, it’s crucifixion.  
Standing trial by fire; rosaries and scars and ashes, ashes, we all fall down; we’ve all got rotten posies hidden in our pockets.

You fell when you least expected it, a sinner instead of the saint you wished you could be.  
With a gun in your hand and a smirk on your lips, you wore a cross and didn’t believe in god.

But you wanted to, you ached for it, felt it in your bones and in your lungs and you breathed in smoke from your burning flesh while I breathed out clouds of nicotine and doubt.

You built your life on bombs and gas masks and bandages, your calculated chaos spread too thin to hold your weight.  
You cracked the ice and found gasoline under the surface.

The second time you caught fire, you were dead before you could finish the story.

After the police cars surrounded me and the bullets hit lungs and they filled with blood instead of air and all I could see was flashing lights and all I could hear was pounding in my ears and my own voice whispering your name as I fell.  
I don’t know if i was calling for help or for a comfortable place to die.

Maybe I just didn’t want to be a tragedy.

We died unknowns, with no gravestones or funerals; we had no names to etch there anyway.  
You were charred to ash and I was riddled with holes, closed casket cases, too horrible to see.

Runners up, fallen could-be kings.

Just two dead, unwanted boys who fought for their lives and lost.

\----------x------------

He would never know that you couldn’t have solved the puzzle without him. That for all your words, all of your arrogant comments, every time you called him a loser and watched him explode, you would have lost if not for him.  
In the end, it was Mello who fit the final piece that brought it all together.

He should have been number one, and you’ve known it all along. You’re smart, effortlessly so, but you’re cold, stiff; you can’t feel anything except logic and calm, and you’d always envied him, envied his ability to react, to chase knowledge and feel the fire of hatred, of burning jealousy, to want something so bad that every action is charged with it. 

So you tore him down to watch the emotions light up, the ones you could never feel, couldn’t grasp, because you were too distant. 

You could calculate, you could solve for X and Y, play strategy games, but that was it, it was all you had.  
First place meant nothing if you felt nothing.

You would never get to thank him, and you wish you could go back, step down, and crown him king, after all.  
Gold meant nothing to you, but it had meant everything to him, and you wonder if he would still be alive, had he held the throne. If you could have called a truce, worked together the way you were meant to, catch Kira with no casualties. If there was a way you both could have won.

It’s impossible to know, and pointless to wonder, so you focus on stacking your castle of dice, your kingdom, no silver in sight.

**Author's Note:**

> I named this after the song: [A Departure - La Dispute](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH8mYeJXHp8), but I almost named it after this one: [Absolution - The Pretty Reckless](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3tFq53dBI) because they're both very Mello.


End file.
